Nevertheless, a lot of actions of the European Commission and the EU itself, seem to turn the EU into a Soviet-styled central-planning bureaucracy with the lack of respect for individual responsibility and liberty, changing the EU's very foundations into Soviet machine of regulation, rigidity and bureaucracy.

To know more about Eu savings-tax directive you can check the Website of the EU Commission, in the section of taxation. Also, try:

http://www.freedomandprosperity.org

in the section of EU Savings-Tax Directive where there is a concise outline of the EU proposal to impose punitive tax rates on residents' savings abroad.

Yes, you're right. The EU has indeed experienced high GDP growth throughout 60's and 70's but mainly due to convergence factors and high efficiency of investment into fixed and intangible assets such as human capital. For example, the overall efficiency of investment in Slovenia was 25% lower than the investment in Spain or Italy between 1965 and 1975. If the investment was based on efficient basis, Slovenia's GDP could double in 15 years. Due to the abovementioned circumstance, it didn't. Besides, there was a period of hyperinflation and output decline which lasted from 1986 to 1992. And this was a time when Slovenia really lost of all its opportunities to achieve robust GDP growth and open-economy inflation target. Gradually interventionist econ policy, which is still in effect today, has worsened the entire situation, as a guiding principle has been "ignore rules, follow discretion". And that's one of the numerous reasons why it will take 30 years on average for Slovenia to catch-up the per capita GDP level of its northern neighbor Austria.